Page 36 of The Marriage Clause

By two a.m. I gave up pretending sleep was coming. Went downstairs to my office, stretched out on the couch, and stared at a different ceiling until my body gave up and dragged me here. The pool. The only place that's ever been able to quiet my head.

Lap thirty. The thinking organizes.

The board meeting is in three hours. Christian will want me to rehearse answers I shouldn't have to rehearse if the engagement were real. Everly will call fourteen times about vendors. The Vancouver GM will try to lowball me on the trade package. All of that is manageable. All of that is just work.

The thing that isn't manageable is the woman sleeping in my penthouse right now who kissed me like she meant it and then looked at me afterward like she was surprised she did.

Lap thirty-five.

I push off the wall harder than necessary and feel it in my ribs.

The problem isn't that Aria kissed me. The problem is that for three seconds in that office chair, with her weight on my thighs and her hands on my face, I wasn't thinking about the contract or the trust or the board or any of the fourteen reasons this has to stay professional. I was thinking about pulling her closer. About finding out what sound she'd make if I kissed her back properly. Not the controlled version, not the public performance, but the real thing. Slow. Thorough. My hand in her hair and her breath catching against my mouth and nothing between us but heat and bad decisions.

That's the version I can't afford.

The light is changing above me. I can see it through the water—the glass ceiling shifting from black to gray as morning creeps over the mountains. The city waking up. The day starting whether I'm ready for it or not.

I finish at forty.

Grab the wall. Pull off my goggles. Rest my forearms on the pool edge and breathe.

My heart rate is finally where it should be. My shoulders ache in the good way—the way that means I pushed hard enough to earn the calm. The surface settles around me, the water going from churned white to still blue, and for a few seconds I just float there. Half in, half out. Watching Seattle light up through the glass.

This is the only place I've ever been able to think clearly.

Not the office. Not the boardroom. Not the penthouse.

The pool. The silence. The black line at the bottom that asks nothing of me except that I follow it.

I haul myself out, towel off, and head for the showers.

The water is just short of scalding and it's not helping.

Forty laps and I still can't shake the ghost of her shampoo. Peonies. I've known the scent since she started—my mother always had them in the house, a florist on weekly delivery bringing massive bouquets like clockwork. It should repulse me. Family association. Bad memories. The whole Pavlovian catalog.

But the smell on Aria is different. Sweet and warm and nothing like the arrangements that sat on the mantel while my mother pretended everything was fine.

I didn’t mean to blurt out the flower. I didn’t mean to show my cards—that I’ve been cataloging small things about Aria for six months. Maybe because some of it has been subconscious. I'm not trying to notice every detail. My brain is doing it without my consent, like some rogue department I can't fire.

I shut off the water, grab a towel, and dry off. I'm buttoning the cuffs of a fresh shirt—I keep three in the locker room because mornings like this happen more often than I'd admit—when I hear voices on the gym floor.

Levi's easy laugh. Colston's low murmur.

I check my phone while I finish getting dressed.

Sienna Brighton: You're engaged?

Another text follows before I can decide whether to ignore her.

Sienna Brighton: Didn't know kissing in front of paparazzi was your style.

My jaw tightens. I pocket the phone without answering and head out to the gym floor.

Levi is stretching by the pull-up bar. Colston is settling onto the bench press with the unhurried energy of a man who's been up since four but won't admit it.

They both look up when I appear. They both look delighted, which means they've been talking about me.

"You're here early," Levi says. "Even for you."